


Cold Hearted Mindset

by WhiskerFrisker



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Asylumtale (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Axetale (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Dusttale (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Horrortale (Undertale), Axetale, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Cage Trauma, Confinement, Crying, Depression, Disability, Dismemberment, Dust Sans - Freeform, Dusttale Sans (Undertale), F/M, Gen, Gore, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Graphic Description, Horror, HorrorTale, Horrortale Sans (Undertale), Hysterical Crying, Injury, Kidnapped, Kidnapping, Loss of Limbs, MUCH more to come as the story progresses, Major Character Injury, Manhandling, Medical Trauma, Monster Dust (Undertale), Mucus, Permanent Injury, Physical Abuse, Psychological Trauma, References to Depression, Serious Injuries, Sobbing, Trapped, Violence, Vomit, dust - Freeform, dusttale, mangled limb, save this poor child, severed limb, trapped in a small bare room
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2019-08-28 21:04:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16730592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiskerFrisker/pseuds/WhiskerFrisker
Summary: A walk in the woods is nice. Or so you thought. No, this is anything but nice. You meet some unsavory characters after being injured and captured, and they don't seem to want you to leave. That's why they stuck you in this cement prison. You're going to die here, you just know it. But you can hold on to hope for a little longer, can't you? Maybe they'll be a little nicer. Maybe they're not so bad after all...You'll be rescued... right?(A story that explores the true darkness of darker Sans clones/alt universe peeps. NOT for the faint of heart. Don't read if you're squeamish or get sick from graphic depictions. You've been warned.)Now on tumblr: https://cold-hearted-mindset-story.tumblr.com





	1. Gruesome Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Skeleton x Skeleton](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15966272) by [PumpkinFlash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinFlash/pseuds/PumpkinFlash), [Tea_Cup (PumpkinFlash)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinFlash/pseuds/Tea_Cup). 
  * Inspired by [House of Nightmares](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12607052) by [Sephypsycologist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sephypsycologist/pseuds/Sephypsycologist). 
  * Inspired by [The Skeletons and the NOT Pot Dealer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11418924) by [NihilismPastry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NihilismPastry/pseuds/NihilismPastry). 



> (also inspired by some other stories about the horror side of things, which I can't find atm.)
> 
> I started a new story because I wrote this and decided to share it. It's NOT for the faint of heart, I assure you. Enjoy getting sick to your stomach.
> 
> ALSO! I like to use some of the depictions of this artist for inspiration! Msmadeleines makes awesome art of the Creepy Bois. https://www.deviantart.com/mmad-sm  
> Check out her stuff!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A walk in the woods does not relieve stress.
> 
> (Some gore and graphic depictions of illness.)

You had taken a walk in these woods a while ago, perhaps a few months in time to be more precise. You hadn't had any issues then, so you hadn't expected any this time. Of course, that's not how life works, because consistency is not always consistent.

The net had snapped up around you and yanked you up before you even realized you went airborne. The world had flipped upward and swung about as you lay curled on your back in what feels like a mesh rope net. Once you had gained your senses, you felt dread spike through you. 

Trapped in a net, looking around to spot anything that could help as your panicked and fearful eyes dart around. The net slowly turns back and forth, back and forth, as you try to see through the mesh holes that make up the net. You breathing hitches as you frantically search over and over through the dark forest for anything that pops out at you, but you can barely see in front of you. The moon barely peeks through the thick treetops to illuminate tiny spots scattered far apart from each other. You curse yourself for thinking a walk in the forest was a good idea, especially at night. 

You're eyes continue to scan through the dark. Then something moves between the trees. You pause, unsure what you had just seen, before you squint and stare at it as hard as you can, hoping to catch any details. It's deep into the forest and only appears for a second for every few seconds it's out of sight. A distant reddish light is at eye level with your twisting body, smoky particles fading out around it. The light is red with a light blue inner circle, but the center of the light is blacked out with something small and circular. The light moves like someone walking and it keeps swiftly disappearing from view, probably because of the numerous trees between you and it. The light reminds you of a flashlight without a beam, or a lost soul or a whisp. That last thought makes you shiver in fear. Whisps are not supposed to be friendly, and though you don't exactly believe in that stuff, in the moment it feels like a tangible possibility. 

You shiver and cower by curling into a tighter ball, a soft whimper managing to escape you. You look at the reddish ball of light, only to now find two of them next to each other. The red, purple, and blue light is to the right of the new light, and the new light is a smaller circle of red. They're both frozen and unmoving, and a thought makes your stomach and heart clench. They look like eyes. Your breathing starts to escalate and you feel yourself shaking as you stare at the lights. They're looking right at you and they're still level with your swinging body, which is a strange place to hold a creepy flashlight. 

They start moving again, this time swaying back and forth, left and right, just like someone walking through the woods and stepping over foliage. Your breath catches in your throat as you see the thing walking closer and closer towards you. With trembling hands you start to fumble with the net, your eyes locked onto those eye-like lights, never daring to look away. You try to use the netting holes to pull yourself up to the top of the net, hoping to find something you can pull loose or even a hook it's attached to. The trembling wracking your body is making it difficult to keep steady, but you keep grabbing handhold after handhold, never taking your eyes off of those approaching demonic eye lights. 

When you manage to stand and reach the top where the net is pulled together, you fumble around to feel what is keeping it together, deciding that looking at it would be useless with how dark everything is. Suddenly, it's like a wave of silence pushes through the area you're hanging in. All the crickets and every bit of stirring life goes deathly quiet, and your hairs on your body stand up as you pause to take this in. It feels like the air around you is filing with crackling tension as you hold your breath in fear, all the while as those lights keep swaying closer. After a moment of silence, you start to hear something very faint, almost like the rhythmic rustling of leaves. You realize it's coming from the same place those eyes are at. It sounds like footsteps. Your breath stutters and you remember your goal to escape with earnest, so you quickly continue to pull yourself closer to the top of the net. 

You continue to stare at those slowly swaying lights as they slowly eat away the distance between you. You try to hold yourself up to relieve some of the weight that's pulled taut the neck of the net. Holding one side, you lift your legs up off of the bottom and start to weasel your other hand into the other side of the net neck. You're hoping and praying you won't lose your grip and break off your hand through the holes. 

You glance at the net above you and curse as your shaking fingers fumble to get the rest of your hand through a hole. The sound of crunching leaves is loud in the silence, and it makes your nerves unravel with each noisy step. It sounds like the thing is mere inches away from you, and yet it continues to grow louder. Finally, your fingers manage to pull your hand through a hole. The rope rubs hard against your skin and you cringe at the sensation. Once your hand is through, you touch all around the top area and, to you horror, you find that the four corners of the net are ravelled around four perfect rings of metal with a fifth ring holding together the four ropes connected to the rings. 

Your chest constricts and you look back to those moving lights, only to find that they've stopped a couple feet away, the lights wide and bright. You lock up, staring at them, and they stare back. You wait for something to happen, but they simply stare at you through the holes in the net. A shiver goes down your spine. The darkness around you seems to only get darker, and you curse the clouds for covering the moon as the area becomes pitch black. Your eyes never leave the ones before you, and the eye-like lights hardly move aside from some strange wispy effect around the edges. A strange smoky fire-like light drifts and twirls out of the eyelight with two colors, the smoky stuff turning purple before fading out.

Something touches the net, and you make a startled fearful noise as your net is jarred slightly before going still. You tremble and stare at the lights while trying to push up the metal ring holding the ropes against each other. The forest floor beneath you crunches and you jump, and then the eyelights before you start to slowly move closer. Your breathing is stuttering as you try to pull yourself away from that side of the net, which in turn starts to put pressure on the hand stuck in a hole. You cringe as the rope strangles your wrist, and then jolt when the ground below crunches again. The lights continue to move closer and closer, never moving from their directed gaze upon you. Your skin prickles and your blood freezes over as the lights move right up against the net, staring at you, unwavering, aside from the wisps of light that seep at the edges. 

Your heart pounds loudly against your rib cage, desperate to escape the horror that awaits you as you stare at the eye-like lights. Then you notice something, and that something is the fact that the lights are inside their respective pitch black holes. Those holes sit in a slightly brighter toned circle, and then you see a smile sitting below those eye lights. You make a strangled noise of terror when you realize that this thing is a face. You absently also note the hood shadowing the face, and the eye lights slightly illuminate the face. 

Your breathing becomes erratic as your hand attempts to flick the metal ring up, but it doesn't seem to be moving. A broken whine starts up in the back of your throat and tears begin coalescing in your eyes. The limp net begins to move as the face presses further into the rope, the smile twitching upwards as those eyes stare into you. You can't stand to look at this, and yet you fear more what would happen if you look away. You grit your teeth as the tears start to fall down your face. The face keeps moving closer as if taking in your expression and feeding off your fear, drinking in the unadulterated terror spiking through your veins. A sob escapes you as you cringe backwards, and then you see in a hole next to the face a hand, a long spindly hand, slowly curl one digit at a time into the hole of the net. You sob again and tears start to blur your sight, warping the eye lights and stretching them vertically.

“heh.” A low and dark single huff hits your ear and shakes you to your core. You start to hyperventilate as you stare at him, and your body trembles violently.  
Your free hand suddenly slips from the hold it has on the net. All of your weight yanks on the wrist trapped in the hole at the top and you yelp when pain spikes up your arm as something pops in your wrist. Then your legs hit the bottom of the net, and that causes the rope around your wrist to snap together, strangling your wrist with great force. You scream when you feel something snap in your wrist and feel the rope dig deep in between your bones. You frantically grapple for the net to hold on as you openly sob from the strain put on your arm.

Suddenly you feel the net go limp with a snap and then you drop. You hit the ground on your butt with a yelp and then continue sobbing as you pull your wrist against your chest. You sit there and cry as you tremble uncontrollably, willing your wrist to stop burning and twisting in on itself. Your other hand makes a shield around it on instinct, and you feel something wet on your skin. Then you notice the spreading wet sensation where your wrist is on your shirt. You panic more when you fear this could be a large amount of blood, and then you pale when you imagine what it must look like.

The net starts to move and shift as a few steps in the leaves sound out. This reminds you that you're at the mercy of whatever had found you. The top of the net is pulled along and you cry out when it yanks your wrist along with it. You yowl in pain when the net pulls your wrist up and along as you're dragged. You grab at the top of the net and pull yourself up so there's less pressure on your wrist. You only managed to succeed in easing some of the pressure off of your wrist with the net being pulled along as the loud crackling of leaves fill your ears. You keep pulling yourself forward as you sob and cry, trying your hardest to pull your mangle wrist free from it's binds. The thing pulling you along chuckles at you and you look up to see a single red eye light looking down at you from behind it's shoulder. It never stops walking as it does this, continuing to pull you along at the same pace while the leaves crunch and shift loudly in your ears. You squeeze your eyes shut and continue sobbing while trying to release your wrist from it's confines. 

It feels like an eternity as the thing pulls you along through the forest. You keep glancing ahead in vain hopes of seeing something different. Then you do. A large looming shape appears from above the trees, and you quickly find yourself in a clearing as dim light pools around the shape. You see it's a house, mainly because of the few windows with light coming from them. You continue to sob, weaker now thanks to your dimming consciousness. Suddenly the top of the net drops to the ground, smacking your hurt wrist against the ground in an awkward position. You yelp as it sends shooting pain up your arm and fills your head with screaming signals. As delicate as possible, slowly you pull your injured wrist against your body while trembling as you try to bare the pain.

You hear talking approaching from the house, and two pairs of footsteps crunching through the grass and leaves scattered about the clearing. Through teary eyes you look up to see two silhouettes bordered by the light from the house. Accompanying the silhouettes’ faces are three eye lights, the pair from earlier accompanying a third light. The new light is much larger with a pinprick of darkness in the middle, and the red making up the light swirls around like blood in a sphere. You feel your stomach twist and start to feel queasy as you stare at it, so you look back to the other two eyelights which seem to be half lidded; it sends a chill down your spine. The first eyelights from earlier seem as if they're relaxed and conceding as they stare down at you. The three eyelights approach you calmly, the new one staring at you like it's just caught something exciting, and you feel like you're going to be torn apart and swallowed whole just from that stare. They stop a few feet away from you, and you sob as quietly as you can while looking up at them, at their mercy now.

“what do you think?” says a deep monotone voice. You can't tell from which of the eyelights it's coming from.

“heh, seems ya caught somethin’ delicious, Dust.” A deeper, slightly hoarse voice replies.

“I doubt the pansy would want to find a carcass in the house.” Your breathing stutters at these words. You really are going to die, oh God. Calm down, you need to hear what they're saying.

“...ust take 'er to the basement. lock her up and keep her around, maybe use some of her when the wimp forgets tah feed us. heh heh.” You start to tremble at these words, fearing the worst outcome of this entire scenario. 

“i'm not eating that.”

“heh, suit yerself.” The swollen red eyelight moves down closer to you and you cringe back against the ground with a whimper between sobs. “...seems a bit damaged.” A hand grabs the net and you jolt with a yelp.

“it was being stupid. tried to escape,” replied the monotone voice.

The eyelight right in front of you squints a little and moves closer, spiking your fear as your breath hitches while you try to move away from it. “heh, not too bright then. easy prey.” The hand grabs your hurt arm and you yelp trying to pull back in panic.

“N-no, no…!” You beg as you try to pull your wrist away from it. The thing puts it's other hand under your hand that had been hanging limply. You hiss in pain and tense up as fear prickles at your skin like static electricity, but you pause when you see how delicate he's being. You can't help the continued whimpers that escape with the tears due to the pain coursing through your wrist.

“...hm, pretty mangled, heh. what'd you do to her?” the voice in front of you asks.

“i told you, it was acting stupid. it did this to itself.”

“heh,” the hand under your hand shifts, “seems irreparable tah me.” Your blood runs cold at these words and renewed tears flow faster from your eyes. Boney fingers start to curl slowly around your hand, and you glance down in fearful confusion before looking to the single red eyelight. It's staring right back at you as it swells larger, which illuminates an impossibly wide and growing wicked smile filled with thin sharp teeth. Your eyes grow wide as saucer plates when you see this. Just as you try to yank your wrist free, the fingers snap closed around your hand and dig hard into your skin. You start to shriek and use your other hand to grab at it's wrist holding you captive. You try to dig your fingers against their wrist, but it doesn't give a single bit even with the exaggerated dips in the rock hard skin. 

You're hysterically sobbing as the thing chuckles at you, and then blinding pain explodes from your wrist and overwhelms you entirely as everything becomes a blur of agony. You feel everything spinning wildly in your head and feel like you're being tossing around before you start to come to your senses. You hear someone shrieking continuously and feel your throat constricting. You realize you're screaming, and then you find out why when the pain explodes in your head again. The world seems to swim around you as your half blind eyes stare at darkness.

Light suddenly blinds you as a severe nausea washes over you, and you feel yourself go pale before turning your head to the side just in time. Your stomach and throat convulse and you feel bile burning your esophagus as it jumps up and out of your mouth. You hear it splatter the ground beside your face, and you convulse twice more before it stops. You gasp for air and continue crying as you lay there in the blinding light with ringing ears. You realize your wrist feels like it's on fire and there's knives being stuck up inside your arm. Your body trembles violently as you sob uncontrollably, being overwhelmed from the pain. Consciousness starts to further slip from your grasp, and you welcome it easily as your eyes shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Your first mistake was trusting them. You should have tried harder to escape..."


	2. Something Amiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awakening with a strange disorienting sense in this room is quite disturbing. And then you find out what happened to you, and this just might have you dying of shock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh kay well, this has been me waiting excitedly to post this since the last chapter. Unfortunately, the next chapter won't come for a while because of school and other obligations. Bit it's definitely in the works,so not worries!
> 
> WARNINGS: vomit, some gore, permanent injury, etc. Read the tags ;3

A rank stench that reminds you starkly of rotten cheese and meat fills your nose as you start to come out of your stupor. You groan and shudder as you feel a hard and graty surface under your back poking into your skin through your clothing. Coughing wracks your parched sore throat as you take deeper breaths. The rancid air sticks to your tongue and makes you gag slightly from the taste. You manage to crack open your gummy eyelids and find what was smelling so horribly.

Bile coats a cement floor right next to your face. You cringe and pull your head away some as your eyes start to water from the stench. You cough some more and gag a little at the potent smell, so you turn your head to the other side as you start to recall having made that mess. You try to remember more from what happened prior to this point, thinking back to what you'd been doing before winding up wherever this. Your thoughts stop dead for a moment when you see two familiar eyelights just outside of the circle of light cascading down on you.

Your blood freezes and your breath hitches as you stare at the eyelights. Memories of what had happened flood your brain. Your good hand reaches for the injured wrist to check how it's doing, prepared for pain, but an unexpected sensation makes you yelp. You grit your teeth when your hand hits something that jars pain directly up through the center of your other arm. Nausea comes with the sensation, alongside noticing a significant lack of weight on your wrist. Your stomach twists further and further as you slowly move your shaking hand to touch your wrist that's throbbing. Your eyes look down to help guide your hand as you touch the nub where your hand is supposed to be. You freeze when you see a bloodstained cloth covering your wrist. Where your hand should be. It's not there. You start to tremble as you stare in disbelief. Your breathing hitches and stutters. 

“W...w-what…?” Your voice is scratchy and goes up three octaves when you stutter in confusion.

“you mangled your wrist, so he tore your hand off,” says the monotone voice, which you now know belongs to the one that found you. “he didn't want it to go to waste.” Your eyes fill with tears, disbelief and shock clouding your mind as you look up to the one who spoke. You feel numbness washing over you with static as you stare at him with your mouth open, words unable to form. The figure sighs and you hear their feet shuffle along the floor as they take slow steps closer to you, their eyelights swaying slightly as they move closer. The figure comes into the light, but you only have the mind to stare at their face with the shock covering your brain. He stops next to you and stares down at you, eyelights glowing bright under the hood shadow. The light from above cascades down on him and gives off a creepy shadowy effect; it reminds you of an angel of death. 

You stare up at him while he seems to inspect you, eyelights flicking around a small amount while staring down at you. He sighs again and his eyelights become half lidded like they had been that other time. You frown in uncertainty before your mind drifts. Then you remember your hand, and you grab the arm stub as reality starts to press down on you.

Your lip quivers as it finally sinks in: you lost your hand. All that's left of your hand is a stump covered in blood and wrapped in a cloth. You look down at the stump and hiccup as you stare at the epmty spot. You start to think of all the things you can't do and a sob escapes you. You wonder what it must look like under the cloth, and then your stomach rolls over as you picture it. 

You quickly lurch to the side that's already splattered with vomit and give it a new coating, and gagging noises filling the room. After one spray, your stomach empties and all that comes out the second time is horribly burning stomach acid. Retching acid leaves your mouth with a bitter taste that you do your best to spit out as much as possible. You stare ahead into the darkness as you still try to process the fact that you lost your hand to some rope and a...whatever that setient creature was that tore it off. Your remaining hand trembles as you lift it off the ground from where it had been supporting you as you puked. You shut your eyes tight and clench your teeth.

“it's not the end of the world,” the monotone voice says, still emotionless. 

You look up at him with teary eyes, a frown slightly formed on your face. 'Not the end of the world…?’ You can't fathom how true this might be for you, because you can hardly process the fact that you only have one hand left. Instead, this comment gives rise to a cold fiery. You huff angrily and stare with a squint up at him through tears in disbelief. Your mouth opens to speak, to let the words of anguish and revolt spill from between your teeth, but then the words die on your tongue. Your voice fails you, coming out as a strangled cracking noise. You can't speak, your tongue is like cotton in your mouth. Your forehead scrunches up and you look down to your severed wrist, and the tears start to spill over again. You hiccup and softly cradle your injured arm, biting your lip as you do so. You body trembles as you cry over your lost hand.

“you should be glad,” the monotone voice speaks up. “you would have died from blood loss without healing magic.”

You ignore this on the outside, too upset over the loss of your hand and overwhelmed by the throbbing pain going up your arm. The arm remains mostly limp as you cradle it with your one hand, rocking back and forth slightly and moaning in grief.

Two taps under your folded leg has you gasp and sniffle before looking to see the faded pink slipper retract from your leg and rest on the floor with it's counterpart. You look up and finally see what exactly this guy looks like. He's wearing long black basketball shorts with a strip on either side of the leg, a graying white sweater, and a heavy looking faded light blue coat with a gray hood. Then you realize something that your sure you imagined. You look back to the exposed parts of his lower legs and have to blink a few times with a sniffle. They look like bone, way thicker than human bone, and a lot whiter. You can see the lower tibia and fibula before it turns into the bones that make up the ankle and foot before the pink slippers cover the rest. 

You blink and use what's not missing on your arm to rub the tears from your eyes so you can see better. Unfortunately, this causes a spike of pain from the skin pulling at the stump where your hand used to be. You hiss and cringe at the pain, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. You cradle your arm again and stare down at it, and that's when you notice a darker splotch on the floor beneath your folded legs. You sniffle as you squint at it while moving your legs apart to get a better look. Then you pale when you see the dark rust colored stain on the concrete underneath you. Your hand comes up to cover your mouth in horror as you stare at it, and your mind starts to make the connection with your severed wrist in sight.

“you bled too much. made a mess everywhere.” You look at the legs standing beside you from the corner of your eye when the owner of the monotone voice speaks. “ horror got mad about it, something to do with wasting food.” You stare at the legs, starting to feel detached from the whole situation. There's no way this is real. This is the stuff from the darkest of nightmares. The voice sighs, “not like it's a big deal, him and crooks are the only ones that care.” He steps away from you and into the darkness outside of your circle of light. There's a few shuffling of footsteps before a sliding noise followed by a soft puff of air. “you're already more of a hassle than you're worth.”

You frown at these words and look back at your lap as fresh tears start to brew in your eyes. You sniffle yet again and use your shirt sleeve to wipe your dripping nose. The air in your cement prison is chilled and damp, likely due to the season being mid-fall time. You can feel the cold seeping up from the cement and into your legs and bottom, numbing your skin. The chill reaches through your muscle and tissue to your bones and leaves a stiff ache that travels through the rest of your body. In short, you feel miserable, and you think you'll be getting sick down here to top it all off. Your eyes rest on your severed wrist yet again, and again you start to cry. You moan and wsob as you stare down at your wrist stump and grab the arm in your hand. The nerves underneath the skin spike with main and you hiss as you let go. You sob at this and cover your eyes with your hand while you continue to openly cry. 

Through the tears and aching, you hear shuffling coming from the skeleton in the room. You look up with a nasty snot-ridden snort and see the skeleton walking up a flight of cement stairs that you hadn't taken any notice of before. You sniffle a little more and start to stand, but an invisible force pushes you back on your butt. You let out a surprised noise and look around to find nothing. 

“stay.” The skeleton speaks, still with that same monotone. You frown slightly and look down at your lap, realizing you're going to be stuck down here with nothing but your severed wrist to keep you company or even to look at. You here the skeleton walk up the last steps and then hear the door open and close with a loud squeaking. You cringe at the sound, but at least you'll know when someone comes down here. You highly doubt you'll have any deep sleep down here, so you're sure you'll wake up when that door opens. 

Thoughts bwgin to drift as you sit alone in the stark and dank room. You frown and tears start to fall again when your thoughts drift into the future without a second hand. Then you begin to cry as you think about this single dank room situation being a long term thing. You don't want to be stuck down here forever! And you don't want to be eaten alive by that...thing! You give up on being quiet and let yourself wail through your crying, not caring anymore partly because you doubt anyone can really hear you that well. You cover your face with your hand as you cry, not wanting to look at the space anymore.

Suddenly, the door slams open, making you yelp and jump before you look up to see a silhouette in the door. “Shut th’ fuck up, some people're tryin'a sleep up 'ere!” The door slams shut directly after that. 

You'd flinched and tensed up from the all the loud noise, and after that with all he silence in here, your ears start to ring. You sniffle and hiccup as you cry quieter, not wanting to bring their wrath upon you. Scooting up against a walk, you curl into a ball and sob into your knees for a long while. Eventually, exhaustion overcomes your mind and you find your eyelids drooping as you cry yourself to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, it'll be a while longer before the next chapter. It's progressing, but it's slow.


	3. Food For Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting to know your... hosts, is a good idea, but maybe with less threatening on the side. That would be nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this took so long. It was supposed to come out at least a week or two ago. I'm caught up in a lot, please for give me!

A squeak and creaking sound invades your sleeping like the roar of a lion, and you jolt your head up from your knees and whip it around to see the concrete room still enclosing you. The realization that you're still in this small bare room depresses you. This is the third or fourth time you've awoken for however long it's been, and the sight never fails to be soul crushing. Your hopes if this being a dream, a nightmare, have thoroughly been crushed.

It feels like days have passed with how often you've woken, but you're willing to bet it's only been a day at most. Your sleep has been fitful and restless, not to mention extremely uncomfortable. You feel your stomach caving in on itself as your awareness remains fuzzy and dazed. You lick your chapped lips and blink to clear your sunken blurry eyes as you wonder who walked in. With this thought, you look to the stairs for your answer.

Sitting in the dark behind the circle of light cascading onto the bloodstained concrete, you look through the bright halo to the other side of the room. The light messes with your eyes and makes it near impossible to see past it, but you manage to spy the same eyelights that have haunted you the most since this started. These eyelights belong to Dust the skeleton. You learned his name when Horror, the thing with the red eyelight (you haven't gotten a good look at him yet), had poked his head in through the door to call for Dust the second time you'd awoken. The loud speaking and Dust's presence had spooked you at the time, and it's no less disconcerting to wake up and find him staring at you.

You bring your weakened attention back to the present and find Dust simply staring at you with half lidded eye sockets, as he usually does. You feel your skin start to crawl just like every single time he does this. A frown of uncertainty and nervousness clouds your face before you look down to your knees. Each time you've made eye contact with him, it feels like a laser burning through your existence, so you try not to make that too much of a common thing. 

The sound of shuffling along the cement floor in front of you prompts you to swiftly look up where you see Dust has moved under the light and is continuing to move closer to you at a snail's pace. Your eyebrows crease upward with anxiety at this behavior and you start to feel cornered with how reminiscent this is of a predator stalking its prey. You shuffle on your butt to get your feet under you, but then pause when Dust stops a mere foot away from you. You swallow nervously and pensively look up at his shadowed face. 

Dust's eyelights are now wide and round as he stares down at you. Another shiver wracks your spine when you see this, and then you feel a pressure in the air. The pressure starts to feel like boney hands are slowly pressing down on your shoulders, the pointed finger tips digging into your skin. Trembling in fear of what might happen if you look away, you stare up at those eyelights with trepidation starting to rise higher and higher against the pressure bearing down harder and harder against your shoulders. You can feel his laser gaze scorching your insides, bearing down on you as he carelessly peels you apart.

Finally, he speaks, “you're getting weaker.”

At first, your dazed brain takes a sluggish amount of time to process his words, and when they do, you're taken aback. Your mind has to freeze and back track in an attempt to figure out what he is talking about. You blink in confusion and look down at his shorts with nervousness, not wanting to stare at his stabbing eyes, as you think over what reason he'd have to point this out. You decide to speak, “U-uh-” you cough from the slight scratchiness in your voice and try again, hoping this to be the right answer, “I...I haven't… e-eaten…” You look down in front of you when you say this, not sure how he's going to react to this.

There's silence in response, and you glance up to see that he didn't leave and hasn't moved. As the silence starts to stretch, you start to fiddle with the edge of your pants and attempt to swallow some of your nervous energy, fearing that he's weighing how much you're worth at this point. 

It startles you slightly when he suddenly makes a noise, “hm.” 

You swiftly look up to him through your hair and see his eyelights are half lidded again, but he's still staring down at you. After a minute of awkward and tense silence in which you fear for your life and refuse to look away, he moves. You flinch slightly before realizing he's turned away from you and is now making his way slowly over to the stairs. You let out a sigh of relief and look down at the ground in front of you as you wait for him to leave. 

It's about ten seconds later when you realize you didn't hear him go up the stairs, so you look up to see if he's still there. Despite suspecting his presence, you still startle slightly when you see him looking back at you from the corner beside the bottom of the stairs. You stare at him with uncertainty, starting to wonder why he does this so often. Dust watches you a lot, and you have no clue why outside of the possibility of guard duty. You frown at this and look at the ground in front of you yet again while you pick at the end of your pants with your remaining hand. Small bits of dried mud and dirt cake the ends of your pants and the lower halves of your shoes. You sigh and start to pick at it in an attempt to distract yourself from the gnawing hunger in your stomach.

Suddenly, your stomach rumbles and whines loudly, and with it comes a twisting pain. You cringe at this and rub your stomach in an attempt to calm it down, but it only growls back louder, the sound slightly bouncing around the cement room. You look to the ground with an unhappy face, and then wonder if Dust is giving you any strange looks. Despite your better judgement, you look to him through your hair and find him staring at you from the same spot, completely unmoved. His eyelights are still half lidded and his gaze retains the same stabbing feeling that digs through your very being. You shudder and look down at your pants again, chastising yourself for being stupid by expecting anything different while also being glad for this fact.

The door at the top of the stairs slams open against the concrete, making you jolt and whine fearfully as your head snaps up to see who's there. Silence permeates the area as a familiar single red eyelight looks down at you from the open doorway. It's owner stares you down, the eyelight shrinking slightly and squinting a bit. You shudder as you feel a sense of invasion in your being, as if a hungry tiger is deciding whether or not you're a good meal right now. Your arms wrap around your upper torso in a hug to comfort yourself and you look at the stairs instead of that eyelight. This way, you don't have to be mentally eaten alive while still keeping the dangerous monster in your sights.

Through your peripheral vision, you spot the single bloody eyelight move to look down the stairs, and you tense as you anticipate him coming after you. Instead, he stays put and speaks, “she hungry yet?” You blink and look at him in surprise, and then frown suspiciously. The way he worded that, as if he had been waiting…

Dust only glances at him with a nod before going back to staring through you with that bearing down gaze. You frown more as uncertainty and trepidation crawls up on your back and speeds up your heart. The blood-red eyed monster hums and looks back at you, to which you immediately quit looking at his face in favor of the stairs. He scoffs and chuckles before moving back out of the doorway and slamming the door, making you flinch. You look down at your knees again and quietly sigh in relief. Then you hear something from upstairs. It sounds like yelling and screaming, and is that… glass breaking? You shudder and hug your legs, suddenly glad you're down here and not up there. Some heavy slams hard against the floor directly above you, and you tense in fear with a glance upward. When you don't see any cracks in the ceiling, you’re relieved, but when you hear another louder slam above you, your face strains with anxiety. You drop your head to your knees and bury your face into the small alcove, allowing a false sense of security wash over you in this position.

A single huff of amusement reaches your ears, and you tense. When nothing comes from it, you peek from your safety and find that Dust, who continues to stare at you, is still the only one in here. A frown shadows your face as you doubt that the skeleton would laugh at anything, but then, you haven't been here long enough to know that... You tuck your face back into your knees and decide to sit here while the thundering on the floor above continues.

It feels like hours later when a sudden soft breeze hits your legs and the top of your head, tussling your clothes and hair. You tense at this, not sure what would have caused that, before peeking up cautiously. A single bloody eyelight in the dark fills your vision, and you shriek. Your body immediately leaps backwards and scrambles against the wall you're already pressed against as your breath becomes erratic. Your feet repeatedly slip against the grimy ground under you as you fail to stand and defend yourself. 

A slow chuckling comes from in front of you, and with it the terror that gripped your heart fades enough that, through the dark and the silhouetting light, your eyes recognize another skeleton very similar to Dust. The same bloody red eyelight stares at you, mere inches from your face. Heart pounding wildly, you press yourself against the wall behind you as hard as you can despite your trembling legs. The skeleton, who you suddenly remember is fittingly called Horror, tilts his head at you, and then his hand begins to raise. You flinch against the wall and follow the hand with your eyes as it moves upward. The hand opens, and you're sure it's going to grip your neck and strangle you, but then you're left confused when it doesn't. That confusion turns to horror when the spindly boney fingers reach into the empty eye socket and grip at the lower edge, and then they yank. And yank, and yank. Your teeth grit with a cringe as you watch his whole head jerk with the movement, and you press your head firmly against the wall to attempt to get away without possibly triggering this possible murderer. Through the dark and the slight red glow of his single eyelight, you see his sharp jagged smile stretch wide as he stares into your eyes with a gaze that feels as if it's tearing through your defenses. 

“think she's gonna faint there.” Dust's voice startles you into gasping as you almost glance at him. However, the immediate threat holds your attention. “not much use if she dies from hunger and a heart attack cause you scared her so much.”

A sour breath of air puffs on your face and you jolt against the wall with a whimper and try not to gag, instead swallowing back the bile with nervousness. Horror steps back, bringing his other hand from the wall beside your head as he does so. Holy shit, you hadn't even noticed how fucking close he was, and his hand… both of his hands…! The red eyelight rolls in it's socket before Horror turns to face Dust with a squint. “what the fuck do you know about human behavior.”

“apparently more than you,” Dust replies in that same monotone, though there's a hint of something overbearing in his voice.

Horror scowls at him with distaste in his expression and voice, “get off your fuckin’ high horse. not like you had any humans beside that demon to fall in your world, ya freak.”

“at least I didn't eat them,” Dust simply replies, and suddenly it's like the air is saturated in tension. You can taste a thickness in the air that almost seems to pressurized your head. Then dread starts to weigh in your stomach. Did he seriously say…?

“i already explained this to ya. we were starving,” Horror begins, and you notice his bloody eyelight swirling more, giving him a desperate and crazed look. “at least we had a justifiable reason to kill.”

“you killed a lot of humans.” Dust pointedly looks at you, but Horror doesn't seem to notice.

“really? are we doing this again?” Horror is starting to look really irritated now. “you wanna count? how bout all the monsters you killed?” Horror leans forward as he speaks, and as you listen, you have to wonder what the fuck is actually happening here. Do they hate each other? Are they going to fight with you in here? ...Are they going to kill you?

Dust stares Horror down with his half lidded gaze, those eyes getting a more hardened piercing look that you're glad isn't directed at you. The two seem to stare at each other for an eternity before something in the air changes and shifts to a suffocating thickness. In that moment, both of them suddenly look to you and you tense up. Horror's eyelight eats at your gaze while Dust's eyelights start to bear down on you as if he's deciding what to do with you. You take a step to the right against the wall, hoping to get away from Horror, but then Horror takes a step after you with that predatory look in his eye and the darkness engulfs him, leaving that single swirling blood eye. Ice spikes in your veins when he moves and you jerk away with adrenaline rushing through you. 

Horror reacts poorly to this and lurches forward at you with an outstretched skeletal hand, his eyelight large and swollen in his eye socket as it swirls wildly. You yelp and bolt for Dust, hoping that hiding behind someone that has been mostly docile would help. You swerve around Dust and smack against the concrete wall. Your arm stub hits the wall and jars up your arm, making you cry out. You swiftly turn to see from behind Dust,but instead, you turn to find him missing from the spot he'd just been in. You gasp when you find Horror quickly destroying the gap between you two. You shriek as he comes at you and you press yourself against the wall behind you, putting your arms in front of you as a defense and shutting your eyes. 

You feel a bone crushing hand grab your arms and yank them up, making you shriek as your eyes snap open. All you can see is is a shadowed silhouetted skull and that bright bloody eyelight. You tremble violently and whimper as tears start to descend your face. Horror stares down on your crumpling form with that single hungry eyelight.

“you’re not gonna speak of what happened.” It takes you a second to understand his words, but you quickly get the message when he shakes you by your arms. The motion sends a jarring spike of pain up your severed wrist. With a pained cringe, you nod swiftly in a desperate repeated manner and whimper. When your head stops, you see, in the glow of the bloody eyelight, his smile stretches wide again, “good, 'cause I don't wanna clean any more messes up…” He let's go of your arms, allowing you to hit the floor with your knees and pitch forward on shaky arms, your injured one set on the elbow. A sob escapes you as you stare at the floor in frozen terror, wondering if he's going to do something else to get his point across.

When you hear him starting up the stairs with shuffling feet, you release a held breath and gasp in the stale air with the snot dribbling down your face. Your shaking form suddenly collapses the rest of the way to the chilling concrete, and you barely manage to raise your head so you don't break your nose; you have enough problems to cry about. When your body settles on the floor, you lay your head down on a cheek and continue to sniffle and blubber, feeling unable to move with the shock still shaking through your muscles. You feel like you almost died.

Two faded and dusty pink slippers shuffle into view right beside your head. You don't have to really guess who this is, because Dust is the only other thing you've seen in this place so far. There was that one time when someone yelled at you from the door, but Dust is the most common sight in this space. A sigh comes from above you, but you don't bring yourself to look up at him because you honestly don't have the energy, and it's not like your quivering muscles are going to help you. Instead, you continue to cry with a messy face and blurring eyesight.

“your crying is getting excessive,” Dust says from above you. Your response is a broken whining sob with some spittle flying from your mouth in a disgusting manner. Dust makes no more sound and simply stands there as you cry and sniffle disgustingly. After a few minutes, a calming numbness starts to settle over your mind and you're left to stare at the dusty slippers that are still in your face. Things start to fade as you feel exhaustion washing over you. Your eyes drift shut and you're already dreaming of something when your stomach caves in and twists irritably. Despite your yearning to simply drift off, you crack your eyes open and see a single dusty pink slipper in your face. You don't have time to wonder where the other went before you feel something blunt jab your side, making you flinch. You swiftly look downward to see the other slipper poking at you. You blink in confusion, and then frown with irritability.

“get back in your spot,” says the oh so familiar monotone voice. 

Your lip quivers as you glare at the offending foot, but you relent and slowly get to your one hand, an elbow, and your knees. As you go to take the first crawling step forward, Dust jabs your stomach with his slippered foot. Your stomach immediately twists again with pain and all your breath leaves you before you collapse forward on your face, butt still in the air. Coughing away the dirt and grime on the floor, you shift your face so it's lying on the floor and you can see Dust. You give him an exhausted look of frustration, but he only stares back with the typical half-lidded look on his face. Not sure why you were expecting anything different, you huff and raise your upper body to continue your crawl back to the darkness on the other side of the room.

Luckily, your short travel remains uninterrupted after the first fluke, and you collapse to the cold hard ground with relief. The dirt and grime threatens to enter your lungs, so you place your good arm under your head and close your eyes. However, despite your efforts, you notice the feeling of mucus collecting in the back of your throat and there's a slight difficulty breathing. Of course, of course you'd get sick down here. It's dank and cold, perfect to lower the immune system enough to push you into dangerous territory.

A loud clatter in front of your face has you jerking back with your half asleep mind scrambling to jumpstart your body into defense. With your heart pounding and breathing erratic, you look directly in front of you to see a metal tray with… food. It's too dark to see exactly what it is that's sat in front of you, but you can smell the steam of something made of carbohydrates. Your eyes bug out and you immediately grab for it with your one hand to pull it under you. Then you begin to devour what tastes like a baked potato with bacon, sour cream, and something leafy. It's the best thing you've tasted in your entire life, and you'd savor it if you weren't so hungry, but you can't stop yourself from devouring it like a savage wolf. As the food fills your belly, your stomach starts to ease off on the twisting pains and you're left with the first warm feeling you've felt since ending up down here.

The loaded baked potato is finished off in a minute or less. You blindly search the tray with one hand for anything else to eat, but all you find is… You pause. There's a dish with a cool liquid in it, and your mind jumps to the worst thing possible at first; blood. But then you notice the liquid is really thin and doesn't have a smell, so you cautiously dip your tongue in it. You're relieved to find it's just water, and with the dehydration rearing its head you tip the bowl back and guzzle every drop down. A gasp of air and a sigh is released after you finish off the water, and you feel your body start to come back down from it's heightened survival stance. It doesn't completely lower thanks to the constant looming threat literally overhead, but you definitely feel a lot less high strung with food and water in your stomach.

Your mind begins to drift as you lay your head back on your good arm. The idea that you just ate like an animal, especially with a water dish, has you feeling uneasy about this because it points to a few thoughts these skeletons have about your existence. You suddenly remember Dust in the corner, so you look to see if he's done anything different. He's still standing in that corner watching you, though he's leaned up against the wall now. You feel slightly awkward about the fact that you just ate so grossly in front of someone, but then you drop the idea because hey, you were literally starving. You sigh and close your eyes, trying to shrug off the pricking sensation of someone watching you exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is probably in sight of a couple or few weeks from now.


	4. Falling for Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timing is the key to success. Unfortunately, you don't have any keys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOOOOOOO I'M BACK! I promise this story ain't dead y'all! Got a few more chappies up to put down y'all! Yeeyee bruhs! I love this story, and I'm soooo happy y'all love it too!!!  
> Unfortunately i have some sicknesses i have to deal with, so everything will be slow. But! It wont stop, promise! Plus college, y'all. College.
> 
> Have fun reading this next chapter~!
> 
> Posted: 4/17/19 1:30am

You awake from a poor sleep feeling drowsy and sore, likely caused by sleeping on the cold cement ground. You rub and blink your gummy eyelids until they're able to properly open, and then you sit up and look around the room. The first thing you notice is a surprising lack of a certain corner-dwelling skeleton. Your eyebrows raise at this and you decide to get to your feet to begin further inspection. 

Your limbs are shaky and it's a little more difficult and slow to get up with one hand, partly because you have to avoid touching your throbbing severed wrist to anything, but you manage to stand eventually. However, once you're standing, a wave of dizziness washes over you, forcing you to lean against the wall behind you for support. With your body pressed heavily into the cold cement to support yourself, you turn and slowly shuffle your way along the wall. It takes a while to do so with the constant threat of falling caused by dizziness, but eventually you make it to the closest corner of the room. It's not hard to change directions aside from the dizziness that occurs with the direction change. As you walk along the second wall, you find that your feet are having some difficulties staying on one path, which forces you to take this very slowly. 

Finally, after what seems like ten minutes despite the wall only being two yards long at most, you reach the room corner at the bottom of the stairs. You look down and then immediately regret this when your head suddenly feels like it weighs ten times more than usual. You tip forward and jerk to a stop as you brace with your good hand against the wall in front of you. A startled breath huffs past your lips as you stand there trying to get your balance under control, but nothing seems to be working. As the world spins and begins to feel muted, yu swallow back the phlegm that's accumulating in the back of your throat before deciding that sitting down would be a good idea. With that thought, you turn to brace your back against the wall before slowly sliding down into a seating position.

The room spins around you as you look forward at the circle of light in the center of your prison. Your eyesight skips like a broken record, twisting around before jerking back and twisting around again in quivk succession. You shut your eyes tight against the dizzying visuals, and then notice the rolling gross feeling in the pit of your stomach. You rub at your stomach in hopes it will help calm it down; you'd rather not throw up again. That thought then sparks anothersomewhat unrelated realization which in turn leaves you feeling confused about the absence of puke in the room. You distinctly remember throwing up in here… Did they actually clean that up? Huh… how strange to think they'd do that for your comfort. Or maybe not, considering they might usually use this room for other activities besides keeping living humans against their will down here. Then again, this could be their pass time.

You stay seated for a while until the dizzying sensation drifts away enough that you can open your eyes without the world swirling around like a whirlpool. Slightly blurred, tired eyes scan the room thoroughly and find nothing different aside from the absence of Dust. You also note the now missing food tray from before you'd fallen asleep, and you wonder for how long you slept and what went on while you were out. Did they poke at you? Mess with your hair? Sniff at you? Measure you up for their main course? Taste- ok, no more thoughts now. You take a deep breath, hold it, and then release it slowly to be rid of some tension held in your body. And then you realize something. You're all alone down here, with no one watching. You could try the door now.

Excitement blossoms in you, but then you remember how dizzy you'd become just walking alongside the wall. You sigh as you think about getting up again, but you do your best to motivate yourself with the idea that you might never have this chance again. So, with sluggish limbs, you get on your good hand, an elbow, and knees to crawl over to the stairs. Then you begin your ascension to the door. You take your time with each step, ensuring you don't fall off the side considering you're dizzy and there's no railing. For each step you start with your hand, then you hold your severed wrist out of the way and place the elbow down before stepping each knee up. As you climb, your thoughts drift slightly, thinking on the ways in which this could either be a stairway up to heaven… or hell, considering the company you could be running into up there. You continue crawling slowly up the stairs while your mind occasionally drifts before snapping back to make sure you don't fall.

Once you reach the top of the steps, you pause. The door in front of you is rugged and full of splinters as if the old wood had never been sanded or even treated. The image of a splinter in your eye has you cringing and pulling your face back a little. Your thoughts continue to move along. What are you going to do once you're out there? You don't even know what the place looks like at all, so you'd be going in blind. You stay crouched on your hand and knees as you begin to gather courage so you can open the door. With a few deep breaths, a firmed expression, and the idea of freedom dancing around in your head like sugarplum fairies, you feel a little less unprepared. So you stand on your knees, and grasp the doorknob. The metal underhand is cold and heavily dented in as if someone had grabbed it with super strength on more than one occasion. You shudder at the idea of being caught by whoever had done this, and then begin to slowly turn the doorknob. The knob mechanisms creak against each other, threatening to squeak and alert whoever might be on the other side. You're surprised it's not locked. You do your best to keep your breathing even as the knob finishes it's turning, and then everything stops. Holding your breath in anticipation, you lean back slightly to get your feet under you while using the door as support.

Suddenly, the floor creaks behind the door and there's a very clear grumble on the other side, and you momentarily freeze with horror. You don't even have time to react before the door shifts inward, and with it you fall backwards. A short scream escapes you before you drop like a rock onto the concrete stair and tumble over yourself in a rolling mess of limbs. You slam into a wall and let out an involuntary croaked howl of pain before a dizzying dimness clouds your mind. Feeling suddenly more detached, your eyes droop as you lay with your shoulders to the ground and back propped to the side against the wall you collided with. And then your stomach rolls over with nausea. With a cloudy panic, you use the tilted posture of your back to drop onto your side before gagging. Luckily, you manage to swallow back most of the regurgitation, which is important because you have no idea when you'll be eating next. A small amount of cloudy phlegm is all that comes out with an easy spit onto the floor. Gently, you roll onto your stomach and give a quiet groan before shutting your eyes.

What feels like only a second passes before you hear someone speak to you, “heh, you're lookin’ tenderized, there, morsel.” 

Your eyes sluggishly blink open for a moment, and then your eyes move sluggishly to look up and see, of course, that it's Horror. He's standing directly over you with wide eye sockets, and his single eyelight is shrunken to a needle point, which really hits home on the sensation of picking you apart. You shudder and look down at his shorts as a middle ground, too tired and dizzy to handle this much. Then your already hurt arm starts to throb much more painfully than usual. Horror says something else, but you lose the meaning behind the waves of pain crashing harder and harder on to your mind. You start to tremble and grit your teeth against the pain. 

Something jabs your stomach, making you gasp and jerk away with a pained yelp. Tears warp your vision as you look up at Horror with fear and a heavy cringe set into your face. He seems to stare down at you for a minute, his eyelight having grown to the side of a dollar coin. Through your warped and blurry vision, you can see the bloody eyelight flicking about as he scans your body over a few times. Then his face suddenly gets much closer with what seems like a mere ten inches of space between you two. 

The sudden and much closer proximity startles you to jerk away slightly as a small whimper escapes your lungs. Horror's smile grows wider immediately after, and then he takes a spindly hand and places it heavily on your shoulder. You jolt at the impact of his hard sharp bones, and then cringe more when his pointed fingers press against your skin a little too hard. 

“heh, the lil mouse got startled,” Horror speaks as his eyes squint at your face with a suspicion-filled knowing threat. You shake at the idea of him doing something more to you than he's already done.

Another voice, monotone and very familiar, replies, “it's not like she'd get very far. 

Horror huffs and gives Dust a half-lidded side-eye. “It's the idea that i'm going for, psycho.”

“i might be a psycho, but at least I didn't eat my own species,” Dust quips back immediately.

“That's not-...” Horror sighs with irritation, “i already told you… I'm not sayin it again.”

“That's great, cause I've heard it enough times to want to dust you.” Dust smirks at him, and it's then that you understand his name. Dusting someone is probably akin to getting rid of someone, which probably means murder. So...this whoke time, you've been sharing a room with a murderer. You knew this already, but being reminded of it and finding out his name is basically what he does is even more concerning and frightening. You swallow thickly with nervousness, shoving some of the phelm down your throat in tandem. You decide you've had enough time laying there, so you move your weight onto your elbows and try to sit up.

Screaming pain immediately shoots up from your injured arm, though it comes from just below the elbow instead of your wrist. A strangles yelp escapes you and ou immediately fall back to avoid making the pain worse. Slowly, the searing pain begins to subside as you lay there with clenched teeth, trying to breathe hard enough to get through the pain. It's at this point ou notice the silence int he room, having been listening to the dull drone of conversation moments before. You peek your eyes open, and then feel your entire body chill over when three eyelights are seen staring down at you, the largest blood red one leaning in close to your form. Your breath hitches as you try to move away, but you accidentally hit your hurt elbow and make a gutteral yelp before jerking your arm up onto your stomach. Your eyes lurch back to Horror as he leans over your body, his face a mere foot above you. His eyelight narrows at your arm currently hammered with pain, and you instinctively cover it protectively with your other arm, a nervous brow furrowing on your face. A small whimper escapes you, and immediately Horror's eyelight locks with your eyes, looking wide and boring into you like an excited animal. You tremble and hold back another whimper, fearing that he might just tear into you right then and there. Instead, to your horror, he looks back at your arm with a more calculative gaze and grabs for it. You swiftly pull it away some, but it barely moves at all before Horror easily snatches it up just below our severed wrist. You yelp and try to pull it away, but his grip only tightens and he glares at you while doing so, seeming to threaten you silently. Another whine escapes against your will, and his smile hitches up as excitement sparks in his eyelight. Your own eyes widen and you stiffen up, not sure what to do in this situation. 

Dust cuts the tension, “this is getting stupid. kill her or heal her.”

You heart leaps with adrenaline at the idea of being eaten alive and you pull at your arm again, but again Horror has too tight of a grip. 

Trembling in terror, you stare up at Horror with pure fear as he blinks before responding, “ok.” And then proceeds to pull out a meat cleaver.

Your whining turns into shrieking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chappie will be up some time before the end of summer! Yes, everything is just that up in the air. I'm sorry, i wish it wasn't but it do.


	5. Not So Friendly Foes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Any hope of friendship is dashed with a side of salt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!!! GROSS FACTOR, BLOOD, MAN-HANDLING, AND SOMEWHAT GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS. 
> 
> It's here! FINALLY!!! Like omg y'all!!! I've had this mostly written for a month and some, but I've never had the time to edit it just enough to have it presentable. ;C; things happening suddenly got in the way. Let's just say it's been very very stressful. :D 
> 
> Anyway! Hope y'all enjoy!!!
> 
> Posted: 7/19/2019, 3:00 am.

  
"NOOOOO NONONOnono, please no!!!" Your screams ring through the room and deafen your ears as you slide up against the wall behind you. Horror keeps a painful grip on your injured arm, sparking fiery pain in you stub alongside the electric pain shooting up and down your arm in waves from your elbow. An irony taste ghosts upon your tongue alongside the numbing sensation in your teeth, both sensations matching with the waves of pain from your arm like nails scraping directly on your bones. You gag and hiccup, and you register the feeling of snot cascading from your face with hot tears mixing into the mucus. It's a mere brief distraction from the phalanges piercing your skin and adding to the pain. Rivulets of blood seeping from beneath Horror's fingers adds to the idea that _he really wants to steal the rest of your arm._

 

Dust sighs, "she's annoying, make her shut up." His eyelights shift to burn mirroring holes into your skull, and his smile hitches up to a tighter, excited look. "or i will."

 

Blood runs cold under your skin with his look and works, and suddenly you realize you have no possibility of friendly interaction in this place. Darkness coils at the edges of your vision, and your breathing starts to stutter. An attempt to breathe breaks into a hitching mess of short gasps and whimpers. "No, no, no, p-p-please, n-n-no..." Your eyes shut tight and you try to yank your arm away. The motion only jolts your brain with stabbing pain shooting through your arm as Horror's fingers only seem to dig deeper.

 

Horror grumbles in reply to Dust, completely ignoring you, "thought you'd be used to this sorta thing, bein' so _heartless_ an' all."

 

Dust replies with a small edge to his otherwise emotionless tone, "doesn't make it any less annoying."

 

Horror straight up cackles at him, and you crack your blurry eyes open as look between them with fearful confusion. "you getting soft, _dusty_?" Horror squints at "Dusty" with a mocking smile.

 

Dust gives him a deadpan smiling look in return, and you find yourself left to whimper and hyperventilate without their direct attention. "it wouldn't much matter, now would it? i'm far from ending up like any kind of reiteration of the creampuff. stupid asshole doesn't have a clue how much worse it could be for him." Your free hand slowly inches up towards the phalanges pricking at your skin, but you flinch and have to pause when they suddenly dig further under your fleshy layers. You hiss at the pain, glancing up at Horror to see he looks genuinely angry as he stares at Dust, and his grip reflects that. Your eyesight trembles at that look and you move your hand the rest of the way to sneak up to his fingers. You swallow on your nerves, failing to calm them in any way as another sob wracks your body before your breathing continues to come in short gasps.

 

Horror scoffs, "that guy is so ignorant it makes me want to bash my skull against a wall." His face twists with hatred as he speaks.

 

"nobody would miss you if you did that," Dust replies, seemingly indifferent aside from a twitch at the edge of his empty smile.

 

Horror glares at him, "shut up you fuckin' hypocrite."

 

Dust huffs, "explain how exactly that makes me a hypocrite."

 

Horror growls and it makes you freeze mid-motion to rip his phalanges off, fingers paused only a mere inch away. Luckily, you haven't touched his hand yet. "you know what i fucking mean."

 

A shaky breath comes out of your mouth, barely holding steady before it's broken with more gasping breaths of panic. You pull your hand back slowly, leaving a couple inches between your hand and the skeleton vice grip. "don't lie and say ya don't find me less annoying than the others. plus, i still have..." Horror trails off, and you freeze again with a shaky sob cut short to look at him. He seems to have cut himself off with a frown as he looks at Dust, who has a dark look on his face with a hollow smile. 

 

After a moment of silence with your quieted sobs filling the room, Dust finally speaks, giving the distraction more fuel. "you should be glad you didn't finish that sentence." Then he smirks, his eye sockets widening to their full size. "the joke's on you though, you're the one without your brother around, not me."

 

Horror's eyelight sparks and shrinks slightly, and his tone dips to a slight growl, _"you really are a soulless asshole, aren't you?"_ His head tips to the side slightly as he stares at Dust with murder on his skull. A charged, dangerous feeling chokes the atmosphere between the three of you, and suddenly your brain screams to _run, run as fast as you can, up the steps, get the fuck away from them._ Your legs clench as the muscles bunch up, but second thoughts barely manages to stop you from bolting. They could easily catch you. All the same, you wish you could have left.

 

A startled yelp escapes you as Horror suddenly yanks your arm and pulls you towards him. You catapult forward from the force and slam your face into his leg. Constricting pain on your chest suffocates your breathing and you suddenly feel like you're about to die. The colors around you blur and your throat starts to close up. You try to open your mouth wider but nothing seems to give you more air. Your fingers claw at your throat against the feeling that something has latched itself around your neck, fearing one of the skeletons has finally decided to kill you.

 

Something breaks onto your cheek and is swiftly followed by a harsh _crack_ that explodes in your head. Even more explosive dizziness and blinding pain breaks your mind into a shattered mess of confusion and screaming panic. Your mind swirls and jerks around itself as the pain rules over everything. You can't feel anything but the agony and panic ripping apart what's left of the insides of your skull.

 

The first thing that sweeps past the shards of your mind is the sound of ragged and hoarse breathing. The raw feeling in your throat comes directly after it, feeling as if you'd swallowed razor blades. You cough out a sob and immediately regret it as you're briefly thrown back into the jagged world of blinding pain. You blink away the pain and find your eyes slightly shadowed; a solace from the blinding light a few feet away. You also notice you're now laying on your side, the shadowed concrete directly in your peripheral and stretching out to the other wall through shadows and light. The world calms into a clearer picture, and your eyes crack open further as you listen to your wheezing, raw breaths. You notice your arms are pulled around your head and your body is trembling. You also register that there's been a gruff mumbling in the background this whole time. Blurry eyes blink into a slightly fuzzy picture. You look up and down from your perspective and finally register the two bone legs with slippered feet standing directly in front of you, positioned above and below your sight. Terror seizes you, and for a moment you can't fathom why. Then the person crouches, and on reflex your eyes swiftly look up from the ground at their face. The skull with a bloody eyelight hovers a few inches above your head and you find you can't breathe.

 

"finally calmed down have ya?" He smirks at you in a condescending manner. How does a skeleton even do that? What the FUCK are these things anyway?!

 

Your breathing stutters before starting up again with a new panic. Your eyes start to water and hopelessness weighs upon you, translating into a slow wailing of a sob.

 

Horror sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose bone. "yer so fuckin' annoying..."

 

Dust pipes in, "now you get it."

 

"shut up," Horror replies, sounding very much over and done with this. Your breath hitches with fear at this. Is he going to do it finally? Is he going to kill you?! His bloody eyelight looks down at you, the upper half lowered into a half circle as he stares down at you. It doesn't last long before it returns to that full, engorged red moon as it locks onto the side of your head. Your eyes follow his gaze to your bloody arm, and you gasp before trying to cover it with your free arm. Maybe this time you can-

 

He moves so fast you don't even register the pain until you see your underarm gushing blood from beneath his phalanges. A scream rakes through your burning throat and shatters the air, but it quickly cuts off as the pain causes your throat to constrict again. Horror laughs at you and waves your arm nub around lazily, causing his knife-like phalanges to wiggle around under your flesh. You hiss and give a weak, warbling sob that breaks off into silence. Eyes shut as silent sobs wrack your body for a moment.

 

The idea of reasoning crosses your mind, so you decide to try despite your voice being nearly inaudible, "pl....ease, not.... _again..."_

 

Horror only chuckles at you and places a cold hand-sized thing onto the skin above the phalanges covered in your blood. "heh, ya wanna know why i want this arm, morsel?" Your heart stutters at his words. Oh no, God no not this, you don't want this. Your eyes open from a darkness you can't remember asking for. You see him leaning in closer, and closer, and your body trembles in utter terror as an image flashes through your mind of his razor sharp teeth tearing out your throat. He stills when his mouth hovers a mere single centimeter from your ear, his coppery stale breath flooding your nose. _"i want it 'cause your hand wasn't meaty enough to get a good taste."  
_

 

An involuntary, quite sobbing whimper warbles from behind your lips and you shut your eyes, not wanting to see this murderer in your face any longer. His breath puffs across your face with each soft chuckle he gives, the sound overpowering the silence outside of your sobs. You tremble harder and tense up into a tighter ball on the floor, wishing you could sink down into the dirt below or be abducted from this situation.

 

Horror suddenly pulls back and throws your arm down. This gains a started and pained yelp from you as the bloody nub hits the hard cement. Rough, manic laughter strikes the walls and echoes harsh in the small room. You cringe at the sound and cradle your shredded arm to your chest before looking up. It's Horror that's laughing so psychotically and loudly. 

 

Horror manages to speak through his manic guffaws, "hahah, heheh! that was too good, heheh, hahah!!"

 

Uncertainty about this sudden change has you shifting back further against the wall behind you. A glance at Dust shows his typical indifferent expression. He's watching Horror, but you notice a slight difference in the typical expression you've been accustomed to seeing. There's a small crease to his brow and the slightest downturn to the corners of his mouth. Is he….cringing? 

 

Dust's eyelights suddenly snap to you, making you jolt in surprise before nervousness catches onto you. You want to look away immediately, but...you find yourself too scared of missing a possible attack. His smile grows slightly wider upon locking eyes with you, and your head tips down slightly to hide while still keeping eye contact.

 

The sudden absence of explosive crazy laughter has your eyes snapping back to Horror. He's looking down at you with a disturbing smile, too wide to not have something sinister planned for you. You feel yourself tense further and tremble in fear. 

 

"heh, that was hilarious," Horror's rough voice fills your ears, a softer contrast from the loud laugher and the utter silence. 

 

Horror wipes a non-existent tear from his lit socket and then digs hooked phalanges into his empty socket and yanks on the bottom of the hole. The sudden movement from him has you tensing in anticipation for something, but he remains standing above you and digging in sharp phalanges into his socket. In the silence, you can hear a soft scraping sound synching up with the back and forth motion his phalanges are doing on the inner side of his eyesocket. Your stomach twists with disturbance at the idea of scratching at the inner side of your eyesocket and you shudder. Swiftly, your eyes jerk away from Horror to look down far enough to block out the sight. Unfortunately, as you hold your eyes to his slippers, you find that you're left with the fleshy scraping noise. 

 

Teeth gritting from the disturbance, your arms move to cover your ears. The sharp pain from your injured arm suddenly brings awareness to the searing pain you'd been distanced from. It crashes down on you and ou whimper, cradling the mutilated arm against your abdomen with your remaining good arm. You stare at the space between Horror's slippered feet and your trembling legs. Clenched teeth and trembles help distract from the pain ever so slightly, but the more you're left with the feeling, the worse it seems to get. Sobs shaking out of your chest become more and more loud and sporatic as you sit there, thoughts of yourself being broken further and further feeding into your panic.

 

There's sudden talking above you, but you've been too wrapped in your head that you don't register what's been said at first.

 

"alright, morsel, let's do this for real this time," Horror's words finally break through the haze. Your eyes widen with terror and your breath hitches as you gasp. Eyes shoot up to meet Horror's face to find him looking down at you with a strange glaring smile.

 

Panic seizes you, and suddenly you find your voice. "No, no! You can't! Not again!!!" 

 

Horror replies, "it's gonna be useless anyway," with a condescending smile. 

 

The horror of losing the rest of your arm reignites and you start sobbing. Your weakened hand pushes at Horror's grip to get him off of your arm without hurting yourself too much. It winds up hurting regardless, and Horror rolls his eyelight at you. This sparks pain in your heart from being subjected to such a careless act. Filled with anger towards their carelessness about life, words suddenly spit from your mouth with venom, "how can you be so... _heartless?!"_

 

Horror pauses a slightly slackened expression, as if stunned by these words. Then his smile starts to curl higher and higher, his eyelight swelling bigger and bigger. You start to tremble and sink down into the floor, eyes wide with fear as your mind wildly whip about in chaos wondering if he's planning to torture you. 

 

"Heh," he starts, "y'know…" he yanks on your arm and you howl in pain, "skeletons don't exactly have hearts, sweetmeat, much less organs to begin with. Hell, we don't even have this fleshy… fragile..." his words trail off as his hand gripping your arm scrapes the thumb against your skin, "...cover, that you have." Tears are streaming from your face and pure fear rattles your body and pounds at your heart and ribcage. Your teeth begin to chatter as a helpless sob escapes your lips. Horror seems to get a distant look on his face as his eyelight flicks to your face.  "Pap used to make the best spaghetti with fallen humans…" Drool begins to slide down his chin as he stares down at your with hunger. 

 

Your mind breaks with panic and your lungs explode with shrieking sobs. Your limbs flail against his hold and shove at anything you can get your hands on to try to get away. Screams rip against your throat and ring aggressively against the walls as you find yourself about to be eaten, probably torn apart alive. Your body is spiking with searing pain in your joints and bruises coagulate wherever your skin hits the boney skeleton. 

 

Suddenly your stomach drops as gravity yanks on your body, but then you feel yourself go airborne before your injured arm explodes with pain. Your vision goes white and your ears scream with overwhelming ringing. Then your hearing comes back and you register guttural shrieking berating your brain. Your throat feels like it's on fire, and then you realize it's contracting and feels like it's being rubbed raw. When you realizes this, your throat closes off for a second and with it the shrieking stops. Your mind swirls and rips back and forth with confusion and panic, but you can't place why. All too soon, you're coughing and sobbing hysterically, and then a burning and electrifying sensation in your arm sparks your awareness into blinking sharpness. you gasps raggedly and your head snaps forward. 

 

A bloody eyelight in a glascow smiling skull completely fills your vision. Danger alarms go off in your head and you swiftly jerks your head back, hitting it against the concrete. A deep, raspy chuckle surrounds your head and vibrates through your brain. You cringe and sobs as your eyes meet that same grinning skull. 

 

"you're too helpless. it's kinda sad, honestly. almost makes me not wanna kill ya, even if i needed to…" You tremble violently, your mind flipping shit over itself screaming to figure out what the fuck that's supposed to mean. 

 

Suddenly, you're dropped to the cement floor on your ass, and the impact travels right up your spine. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth and an uncomfortable pressure in your skull. You whimper and hug yourself, but then gasp when your injured arm spikes with renewed pain from the motions. You look down, the sudden memories filling you with trepidation. However, instead of a mangled arm, you find a large purple hand bruise halfway up your lower arm with the puncture points seeping small amounts of blood. Everything below the punctures is saturated in the blood that managed to flee. Your sobbing slows to tearful whimpers as you stare at your arm in confusion while a light-headedness starts to overcome you. Horror speaks, "it wasn't worth the effort. too much bone and not enough meat." 

 

Thoughts scramble over themselves in a somewhat sluggish manner as you frown in confusion at Horror. "Wh...wha…?"

 

Horror gives you slightly annoyed and deadpan look as he speaks, "i don't wanna waste anymore supplies than i have to on a body that's still alive." This fails to clear up anything for you, and you must have looked even more confused to Horror based on his reaction. He scoffs and stands up before taking a step back. He glances and Dust and glares at him before your eyes begin to slide closed. You hear Horror sigh and he grumbles something to Dust before his slippers give off that distinct shuffling sound as he moves away from you. 

 

Another sigh, directly above your head, fills your ears and ruffles your hair. "you're more trouble than your worth." It takes you a minute before you recognize this as Dust speaking. "creampuff wouldn't know any different if…" Something cold ghosts upon the skin on your throat. A confused hum slips from your throat and you frown at the uncomfortable sensation. Something tells you to be scared, but you aren't sure why. You decide that the darkness calling you to drift away is more important than this irritation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will come, definitely at some point. Summer school and fall semester will get in the way, as will all of the projects I'm a part of. (Plus I'm still sick long-term lol. But at least i have a diagnosis now!) I'm sorry bout that unfortunate turn, but rest assured this wont die. I love it too much and I've FINALLY developed some solid plot points and cool ideas to take this!

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you want to see something happen or feel something could be improved.
> 
> Characters so far:  
> Horror - Horrortale Sans  
> Dust - Dusttale Sans


End file.
